CDC Panel Eliminates Long-Standing Newborn Vaccine Recommendation

A vaccine panel hand-selected by Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted Friday to stop recommending universal hepatitis B vaccines for newborns.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices votes 8-3 to end its longstanding recommendation that newborns receive a vaccine against hepatitis B, which causes liver disease, within 24 hours of birth. Instead, the panel will only recommend infants born to mothers who have tested positive for hep B.

Medical experts have warned that this targeted approach could result in missed infections, sow doubt in vaccines and that the hepatitis B vaccine poses little to no risk for infants.

“It could certainly create a situation where we have more infections of hepatitis B in children in our community, which ultimately cost all of us, not just the families impacted, but will cost our community in terms of both infections as well as healthcare costs,” Raynard Washington, Health Director of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during a press conference earlier this week.

The ACIP vote took place after several delays due in part to confusion from the members on what, exactly, they were voting on. The panel ultimately voted to recommend that parents who do want to get their newborns vaccinated against hep B participate in “shared clinical-decision making” with their medical providers.

Over the two-day meeting, members of the panel argued that other peer nations, such as Denmark, do not recommend universal hep B vaccines for infants. But Denmark has a nationalized health care system that can more easily test pregnant women for the hepatitis B virus, medical experts say.

Kennedy reformed the committee earlier this year, after firing every member. He tapped a new panel in June. At least half of the members of the advisory committee have a history of vaccine skepticism.